There was another long consultation, and presently she heard Lord Clarehaven being sent for.
"What's the matter?" she asked, sharply. "I'm not going to die, am I? I won't. I won't. He mustn't be brought up by anybody else."
The nurse patted her hand. Outside some argument was going on, rising and falling like the lawn-mower.
"A pity it's so dark," Dorothy murmured. "The mower had stopped, and I liked the humming. All that talking in the corridor isn't so restful. What's the time?"
"About half past ten, my lady."
A mighty pain racked her, a rending pain that seemed to leave her with reluctance as if it had failed to hurt her enough. Her whole body shivered when the pain passed on, and she had a feeling that it was a personality, so complete was it, a personality that was only waiting in a corner of the room and gathering new strength to rend her again.
Delirium touched her with hot fingers. It seemed that her body was like the small triangle of uncut corn round which the reaper relentlessly hums. It was coming again; it would tear the fibers of her again; it was coming; the humming was nearer every moment. In an effort to check the incommunicable experiences of fever, she asked if it was not the lawn-mower that was humming.
"No, dear, it's the doctors talking to his lordship."
"What about?"
The humming ceased, for they gave her chloroform. When she came to herself she lay for a second or two with closed eyes; then slowly, luxuriously nearly, she opened them wide to look at her son. There was nobody.